MUSEUM OF TRANSITORY ART

MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art: experimental art platform for research and production of Transitory
Art & temporary residency network

Art Starts Where Culture Stops

MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art examines the idea of the museum - what
is its role today and in the future, the idea of transitoriness - in either
space or time, and art - what is art in relation to life.

MoTA is a unique platform dedicated to the research and production of the Transitory, Experimental
and Live Art forms. It is a museum without physical space. Its programs are realised in different
locations and contexts, both in material and virtual space. All MoTA's activities reflect constant
research of art and its production and representation conditions. Every artist, researcher or institution
is perceived as an equal partner, all together aiming at over-passing social differences and exclusive
modes of working.

MoTA is also an artistic-curatorial initiative whose field of action is a continuous redefinition of

methods of activity. It deals with themes of contemporary errors and strategies of our realities and
societies in order to produce ideas, actions and reactions. It is in constant search for the new, the
uncertain and the undefined. With MoTA we redefine the notion of museum in bringing in new ways in
the politics of representation (mobile exhibitions, live art, sound art, art in the public space, site-
specific, workshops) and archiving (ArtistTalk, Mediateque, online museum)

MoTA mobilises art and other communities in order to produce new thoughts, actions and directions in
existing realities. It measures contact with the public outside of artistic circles and generates discussion
outside auto-reflective concepts of artworks.

MoTA organizes support actions for transitory art in the form of continuous events, exhibitions and
educational programs both locally and internationally. The program is happening throughout the year in
different partner cities of Europe and beyond. It is conceived through an open and collaborative
approach of international curators and artists and is enriched with in depth research of yearly focus.

In a time when temporary production, consumption, representation, communication are becoming our
everyday and change our habits, our culture is temporary culture, therefore our art is temporary art.
Now it is time to question the production and representation strategies of physical and media reality.

MoTA is also the first Artist in Residency program in Ljubljana for media, sound or visual artists, who
can live and work in the capital of Slovenia for one month.

What is Transitory Art?

By Dunja Kukovec

The art of the last century is (was) subject to continuous tending towards the new; it was called
modern at first, then contemporary and finally (new)media art.

Transitory art is art that exposes – at the level of concept and context – the question of the boundary.
It represents a digression from the hysteria of capitalism, refusing the terminology that tends towards
the new, such as modern, contemporary or (new)media art. It is taking shape in a time when invention
per se or novum as such fail to be either a fetish or a solution; for many answers and (short-lived)
novelties hide precisely in the substitution or alteration of context, in the transition of/from one reality
into another and some or same forms into others.

Our full acceptance, and often abuse of contextuality of truth (and art) notwithstanding, there remains
the key question of non-abandoning the boundary, for it is only without boundaries and beyond that
the impossible or the absolute may be achieved. Yet in a time of the so-called “open society”, the
perception of the boundary represents that very margin that defines both the outside and the inside. If
until recently we were insisting that there are no boundaries, then also the beyond as such could not
be possible. Today, we know and see clearly where the boundary(boundaries) stands, yet the
“beyond” fails to come to pass. Therefore, the key question is not the abandonment of the boundaries
or narrowness of views, but rather why, despite out full knowledge and cognition, nothing really
changes at the substantial-social level..

Transitory art is consonant with the present in which no one is (does not want to or cannot be) neither
in nor out, and in which we are aware of the answers, numerous new methods, tactics and strategies,
but still fail to apply them in the geopolitically or technologically separated realities. Transitory stands
for flexible, mobile, passing, unsteady or even adaptable; while in formal terms it may represent an
event, an impression, a hack, a change of thinking or a gesture not necessarily tied to an object of art.

MUSEUM OF TRANSITORY ART

Collective institutions of the last century that have shaped the paradigm of the present with
mnemotechniques, history analysis and systematic archiving, function only under the guise of the
universal and the objective; in practice they involve strategies of patriarchal-colonialist forces that
create particular
worth (and values). One day history will be rewritten anew and archives will be updated.

MoTA museum exists both in real and virtual space. It may occupy either an existing institution or a
public space. While at times it may occupy the actual physical space, at other times it is only a
contextual framework. MoTA museum is not a national or an “exclusive stronghold”, yet it
institutionalizes memory and gives meaning to art. Since collective institutions are a must for the
visions of the past, understanding of the present and mastering of the future, MoTA museum is a
reconstructed museum that is at once utopia and reality, vision and history.

If avant-garde movements overwhelmed by the futuristic enthusiasm endeavoured to open, bring

outdoors the museum of modern art and destroy the archives, MoTA museum adapts to the time-
space situation, somehow subordinating to art. Moreover, if museums in the past represented an
artistic framework within which everything could become art, now the museum is everywhere where
there is art. MoTA museum maintains at least three parameters typical of a museum, but it de-
constructs and re-constructs them.

The concept of collection and ownership is being maintained through the production and financing of
art projects and artists, the space is a super-space or a network, while Mediatheque and ArtistTalk
represent an archive and educational “department”.

MoTA is a museum of transitory art that can really produce something precisely by insisting on the
intersection of the established form of museum and the new field of transitory art.

COLLABORATION AND REPRESENTATION

MoTA consistently seeks a networked, horizontal and consensual way of working that finds its utmost
expression in an active collaboration. Everyone takes part in decisions and is responsible for a
particular field. Along with the support of methods of collaboration, both among artists as well as
among artists, curators, theoreticians, producers and spectators, the museum serves the artistic
project best if it fully conforms to its content and various needs.

MoTA sets out to represent artistic practices and projects that are often overlooked by the existing
institutions. Some artists try to avoid the predictable institutional framework, while at times their
practice may shift into other artistic fields.

Since we believe that the attempt of social and artistic engagement that takes the form of discovering,
unveiling of, warning against or questioning the socio-political, technological and information reality
does not represent anymore (the only) significant deviation from anxiousness, we are also interested in
subjectivity as such and the direct and autonomous creative process such as, for example,
programming or painting; we aim to research into the potential artistic practices that are introverted on
the one hand and formally experimental on the other.

FROM BRIGHT IDEAS TOWARDS THE QUESTIONS OF THE EVERYDAY

Let us now return to the question of the everyday where transitory art searches for and finds a great
deal of answers or questions. Science and theory seem not to give much importance to this question
and therefore debates about the everyday turn out to be extremely irrelevant or even absurd.
However, human life is best manifested in the everyday that constitutes most of our – seemingly happy
– lives.
In the revolution of the everyday only art with its transitory nature can facilitate the understanding of
ever new realities that differ, above all, by what is or is not allowed, how (are or should) we behave
and what state is the physical body in – sitting, standing, walking, running, driving or dancing.